The Best Way to Improve Government Efficiency is More Email

As the US government’s efficiency czar, I’ve been hard at work implementing cutting edge practices like firing then re-hiring thousands of employees, canceling then restoring hundreds of grants and contracts, and threatening to dismember federal employees while holding a bedazzled chainsaw incorrectly.

 

But now that I’ve spent almost a month getting to know how the government operates by doing Control+F searches for “DEI,” I’m ready to unveil the productivity hack I’ve been developing all this time: more emails.  Boom! That’s right, although I’m just an advisor to the President with “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions,” I just emailed every single federal employee and mandated that they respond to me within 48 hours or be fired.

 

What must that response be, you might ask? Well, as previewed, it will be an email!  An email that includes – wait for it –  a “weekly status report.” This is going to be huge – this new, groundbreaking type of report will include bullet point summaries of information that is also tracked and/or reported elsewhere, from every single federal employee, every single week.

 

Think about how much staff time will be saved by 2.3 million people compiling weekly status report emails that recap the status reports they already compiled.  Think about how much time each level of management will save developing guidance for, reviewing, and revising each report to ensure nothing sensitive is shared. Think about how much time Russia, China, and other adversaries will save when, instead of having to try to hack into multiple secure government systems to find information about federal workers and their daily activities, they can just hack into the single, unsecured server I’ve set up to collect all these responses in one place. Now that’s efficiency!

 

You see, my keen business acumen has finally uncovered the underlying problem with bureaucracies in general, and the government in particular: there are not enough requirements or paperwork. To streamline the government, we need more emails, reports, and documentation, not to mention more legal reviews and approval processes. And this hack I’ve developed – a redundant emailed status report – addresses all of those problems at once. As they say in the business world, “let’s reinvent the wheel!”

 

Incredibly, I’m getting some heat about this from the Trump-appointed leadership at most agencies. I have no idea why they would be unhappy that I, someone who doesn’t even work for the government, am not respecting their established chain of command and am going over even Cabinet Secretaries’ heads to make demands of and supervise their employees.

 

But, to be responsive to that criticism, although I said it would result in people instantly losing their jobs, I’m going to suddenly pretend that this email is no big deal! It’s just a joke to see if employees can write “words that make any sense at all,” lol.  Well actually, now that people are pointing out more problems with it, including that it is probably illegal, I’m going to pivot to saying it’s really only a “pulse check” to see if workers check their work email.  Sorry, let me backtrack again and this time say the email is a literal pulse check, only meant to find out if an employee is dead. If you’re dead, please reply “boo!” so we know you’re a ghost.

 

Although there’s been some pushback, I’d like to point out that I’ve already gotten some good responses and think those people should be promoted. How did I read emails sent to a federal email address on a Saturday night as someone who is definitely not a government employee?  Why am I, a private citizen, recommending federal personnel actions on social media?  How am I literally running the entire government right now? The answer to all of those questions is that hundreds of elected officials are just straight up letting me. I honestly did not think it would be this easy.

 

To close, let me say I will persevere in the face of the critics of my innovative business practices.  I know how to make workplaces more efficient and I will push forward.  Look out for my upcoming mandatory training “Could This Email Have Been a Meeting?” It will be at 3am on a Sunday, and you have to attend or your family members will be shot into outer space in a SpaceX branded vessel that may or may not explode.

 

Just kidding!

 

Or am I?